"The Gatekeepers is a stunning piece of education reporting. By documenting the aspirations and anxieties of real-live applicants as well as strategies and motives of real-live admissions officers, Jacques Steinberg has demystified the admissions process of an elite private college in compelling fashion. The Gatekeepers blends helpful information with engaging - even suspenseful - storytelling. He describes a distinctly American rite of passage that turns out to be more reasonable than most applicants and parents fear - but far more complex and idiosyncratic than colleges would have us believe."

-Edward B. Fiske, editor of The Fiske Guide to Colleges and co-author, with Bruce Hammond, of The Fiske Guide to Getting into the Right College

"Jacques Steinberg's book is an absolutely fascinating inside look at how some of our most prestigious colleges and universities determine their admissions. It's an engrossing narrative and, while the author's voice is not judgmental, he leaves us with some very searching questions as to how our nation's meritocracy is actually shaped by personal decisions and connections and by all-too-human interventions - and whether, for these reasons, it is actually a 'meritocracy' at all."

-Jonathan Kozol, author of Amazing Grace

"The Gatekeepers is an intimate, compassionate and piercingly candid portrait of how America selects it elite. The human stories that Jacques Steinberg unfolds are both uplifting and cautionary, for they show the almost unbearable pressures at work in the admissions process of one outstanding university. If you want to know what it means to play God in contemporary America, read this book."

-Samuel G. Freedman, author of Small Victories and Jew Vs. Jew

"Whether you are the parent of three teenagers or simply curious about the college admissions sweepstakes, you will find THE GATEKEEPERS an absorbing read."

-Howard Gardner, author of Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences and Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century

"Jacques Steinberg establishes himself as a superb journalist with his honest and absorbing account of the college admissions process. With great skill and insight, he describes the meritocratic choices that colleges make as gatekeepers to the American dream of higher education.”